Andy Jackson

Disfigured Fame

a disguise would only make you more conspicuous
everyone knows you (or thinks they do)         it's never particular
features—wheels, absent limb, pattern of skin—but the whole
picture suffused with elephantine euphemism you know that guy
he's really (pause) tall             stooped, am I crouching to duck under

the unsaid?                  attention creates the body (breaks it in two)
so in a recurring dream passenger in a familiar and enigmatic vehicle
I'm too cumbersomely elongated to limbo the loping curve of powerlines
crossing the road                     my head makes it through but my back
gets stuck every time              course I shrug off each line

only to awake             surface into the double-taking public, always
before a thought or pause shoehorned into excess and defect (too human
and not enough)                      a word or a stare is a kind of foot-binding
still we long to burrow into our own private (                       ) knowing

                                    a mirror can be an undisturbed surface
                                               slow caress of mist on water        a body
                                    can be a closed parenthesis )  or open (